Mobile marketing and advertising are considered as a channel to reach consumers by utilizing assets and characteristics of mobile media, namely individuality and attainability. Today's mobile marketing is mostly based on push campaigns or pull campaigns that acquire consumers' mobile phone numbers.
An example of a push campaign is a short message service (SMS) campaign where an advertisement is sent to a group of consumers using SMS.
An example of a pull campaign is a “text-to-win” campaign, wherein an article contains a code which a consumer may send to a telephone number used for the campaign and, as a return, he or she receives a notification of a possible price. Furthermore, the consumer receives marketing messages.
Prior art advertising sponsored subscriber connections oblige the subscriber first to receive advertisements, after which free connection time is granted. This is carried out to prevent subscribers from first using free connection time and then terminating the usage of the connection and never receiving advertisements.
A problem is that the prior art method is not a client-friendly approach to a target group of an advertiser. Subscribers may experience this kind of advertising too restrictive and compulsive which does not create a positive attitude to advertisements and to the commodities they advertise.